Israel First, Cloaked in Red White and Blue: The US National Security Strategy

December 9, 2025

US President Donald Trump. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

By Robert Inlakesh

The White House has released its new 33-page National Security Strategy, a document that has had the media talking and poses as a path forward towards a re-shaping of US foreign policy.

The segment of the newly released document that pertains to West Asia, labelled “The Middle East: Shift Burdens, Build Peace,” is disguised as a transformative strategy, in its rather typical Trumpian approach.

It begins by asserting that the reasons for US foreign policy prioritizing the Middle East “for half a century at least,” were down to a number of factors, either no longer existing as strategic hurdles or in diminished form. The most telling point here is that the document puts superpower competition down as a primary motivator of Washington’s interests in the region.

The Strategy asserts:

“Superpower competition has given way to great power jockeying, in which the United States retains the most enviable position, reinforced by President Trump’s 28 successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel.”

The End of Superpower Competition?

What we can extract from this statement alone is enormous. To begin with, while there is an admission that superpower competition is a prime motivator of US policy in the region, it becomes clear later on in this segment that the White House intends to retain this position. However, the idea that US power has suddenly become uncontested under President Donald Trump is totally false.

In fact, the emergence of China as a major international superpower has birthed the idea of a “multi-polar world order” once more. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had until now been the undisputed top dog of the so-called “new world order.”

The mere fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran reached an agreement towards re-opening ties, negotiated through Beijing, and more recently the Saudi-Pakistan security pact, are demonstrations of this slowly shifting world order. It is clear that the US does remain the most influential player, but it no longer enjoys total dominance.

The document uses the “revitalization” of alliances as its alleged proof of its regional dominance, naming the Gulf States and Israel as part of this equation. However, the US never broke from its Gulf Arab allies, although it is clear the Trump administration has established closer economic relations with them. In the case of Israel-US relations, it is laughable to assert that Trump’s policy has revitalized relations that were already ironclad. All Trump did was to bend the knee further to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Working on the premise that Trump is somehow transforming alliances, which there is simply no evidence to support, the document moves on to make yet another active claim: that the threat levels for further conflict are no longer as high under the current president’s administration.

To support this notion, it is argued that “Iran—the region’s chief destabilizing force—has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023,” adding that Trump’s strikes “significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program”.

Any objective look at the region today suggests that due to the actions taken by Israel over the past years, Tehran has become more closed off from signing any kind of deal to limit its nuclear progress, has accelerated its production of offensive capabilities and that in the likely event Israel strikes it again, a new war between the two could prove a major threat to the stability of the entire region.

Contrary to the rhetoric adopted in this National Security Strategy document, the US tricked Iran through a fake diplomatic process, only to allow Israel to violate the UN Charter by launching a war of aggression for 12 days in June 2025. This is a war jumped into by the US on the side of the aggressor.

Palestine: “Permanent Peace”

Addressing the issue of Palestine, it is argued that “progress toward a more permanent peace has been made,” then a few paragraphs down it asserts that “nation-building wars” should be abandoned, despite the fact that Trump’s Gaza plan is quite literally a regime change operation that seeks to completely control and shape the emergence of a new Palestinian governing force there.

Leaving out the case of Lebanon, where a new war appears inevitable, and the conditions for it are due to US and Israeli policy decisions, it moves on to its eastern neighbor instead:

“Syria remains a potential problem, but with American, Arab, Israeli, and Turkish support may stabilize and reassume its rightful place as an integral, positive player in the region.”

Despite recent diplomatic moves, Israeli think-tanks and analysts are currently predicting the fall of the Syrian government, as are their pro-Israeli Washington-based counterparts. That aside, the mere fact that Israel is mentioned as a support actor to encourage stabilization is so ludicrous that it begs the question as to whether the author of the document wrote it with a straight face.

Israel is a belligerent occupier that continues to illegally seize more and more territory from Syria, backs armed opposition militias, and frequently launches airstrikes killing civilians and security personnel alike. The Strategy continues:

“The days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over—not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was.”

This is again false on every conceivable level, with US involvement in Syria having accelerated and expanded, its involvement in Lebanon has expanded, it has actively become directly involved in the Gaza war, and the list goes on.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to visit Washington for the fifth time in less than a year, more times than any other world leader. In fact, the US has been directly involved in starting two Middle East wars since Trump came to office, both on behalf of Israel. Trump launched a month-long deadly assault on Yemen, then moved on to set up, coordinate and directly enter the 12-day Iran War.

US Strategy and the Arab States

The segment also adds rather meaningless rhetoric about allowing Gulf Arab nations to preserve their customs and not trying to influence them, but to let them reform slowly, pretending as if the reforms made under Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have nothing to do with the West and are totally organic. These words are meaningless, just as they were when Trump repeated them earlier this year during his trip to Riyadh.

The document concludes this segment by asserting that the Middle East is “emerging” as “a place of partnership, friendship, and investment—a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged. In fact, President Trump’s ability to unite the Arab world at Sharm el-Sheikh in pursuit of peace and normalization will allow the United States to finally prioritize American interests.”

There are no new partnerships that the Trump administration is making, and the idea that pursuing the normalization of ties between Arab states and Israel is prioritizing “American interests” makes it clear that there is no difference in sight for US foreign policy in the region.

What this document demonstrates is that the White House is comfortable with lying about the realities of the region and using language about ending wars, which will evidently be popular with the president’s base, while continuing to pursue an Israel First Policy that prioritizes normalization and Tel Aviv’s domination. It is clear that the US seeks to pursue dominance over the Gulf of Hormuz and the Red Sea, when the only threat to stability in these two areas is Israeli-US aggression.

In all, this is a propaganda document more than an indicator of any serious policy shifts. There is nothing identifiable on this agenda that indicates otherwise. Every single point is based around Israeli interests, while attempting to flatter Gulf Arab monarchies in the hope of greater economic cooperation.

A real anti-war, peace policy in the region would prioritize pressuring the Israelis to withdraw from occupied territory, while bringing the Iranians to the table to secure a cooperative future that mitigates the threat of arms races and perpetual war. Instead, the US follows a policy of Israel first, refusing to stop its daily aggressions against Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank.

(The Palestine Chronicle)